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Khuzdûl Aglab: The Dwarven Language

The Dwarven language is known as "Khuzdûl Aglab" by all Khazâd, as the Dwarves call themselves. To human ears it sounds like a series of harsh consonants intermixed with a few vowels. Word form and intonation are crucial to determining meaning.

Most humans consider the characters representing the Khuzdûl language to be complex runes mainly used for carving on stone. They do resemble runes, some of them simple geometric patterns, known as Crith.

One of the difficulties in learning Aglab is that the words are constructed from biconsonantal and triconsonantal roots (C-C or C-C-C where C represents a consonant and - represents a vowel or consonant/vowel combination). This type of language construction is known as a morpheme.

Sentence Construction

2. Unlike in English, descriptions can be placed in any order following the object.
Example: "Az carkna cesti borith" (a great, holy chief) can also be rendered as "az cesti carkna borith" (a holy, great chief).

3. Aside from questions, the structure of a sentence in the dwarf language is usually the same as it would be in English.
Example: "Knurlag dorzada az mérna" would literally translate as "he loves the pool". No restructuring of the sentence was required.

q- changes words to past tense. For example, "is" (do) becomes "qis" (did). If the "q" interferes with the word's pronunciation, it replaces the interfering consonants at the beginning of the word. For example, "zeitmen" (honor) becomes "qeitmen" (honored).